How to Run a Task Audit This Week

Today's Tip: How to Run a Task Audit This Week

It's the middle of a busy work day. It feels like you're doing ten things at once. Answering emails, taking calls, pushing clients for their docs, getting returns done. In the heat of the moment, it can be hard to ask whether the work you're doing is really worth it.

That's where a "Task audit" can come in handy.

A task audit is an experiment where you write down all the tasks you're doing day-to-day in granular detail for a week.

Afterwards, you can review what you did and see if you can make improvements.

It's the first step in building a better practice and having more freedom in your work life. It allows you to scrutinize what you're doing to see if it aligns with your goals.

I just recently did a task audit on myself and had some good outcomes:

• I realized I can hire another virtual assistant (VA) to help me with outreach
• I found an update I should make on my CRM to make it more efficient to use
• I set up auto payroll on Gusto so I don't have to run payroll manually every 2 weeks
• Connected two of our apps we're using using Zapier instead of copy pasting things between them

A task audit also keeps you accountable for getting the important work done. So here's how you can run yours.

How to run a task audit

1. Pick an ordinary work week (no travel or uncommon plans)
2. Lay out a fresh doc or notebook
3. Run your day as normal. As you finish a task, write it down under the date, no matter how small.
   1. Be as detailed as you can. Instead of “wrote some emails” say “replied to Client X and Client Y about their missing W2s”
4. Also note down when you get distracted.
5. If you want, include an estimate of how long the task took.
6. If you want, include personal tasks.
7. At the end of the week, review:
   1. Did my work this week overall align with my bigger priorities?
   2. Which tasks are unnecessary? Which aren't worth the time?
   3. What can I outsource?
   4. What can I automate with tech?
   5. What can I optimize? By batching work, improving your systems, time blocking, etc.
8. Feed your list into ChatGPT. Use this prompt below.
   1. “Pretend you’re an expert tax preparer and a lifelong time management and productivity coach. I just completed a task audit of my past week, writing down in granular detail all the tasks I completed, with the objective of finding areas to improve my productivity, eliminate, delegate, or automate. I’ve copied the list below. Suggest areas to optimize, eliminate, delegate, and automate.”
      

That's it! It should give you a good starting point to see what you can improve.

After filing season, take another look at your audit and see if there's bigger changes to be made to your practice like re-structuring your team, new tools, or new policies.

If you're open to it, we'd love to see your task list and help you spot areas to improve. Just drop a reply.

Good luck

P.S. this email series is by CleanUpBuddy.ai, which helps you turn a tangle of bank statements into a clean P&L in under a minute using AI.

It's great for those Schedule C clients without clean books. You know who I'm talking about. Feel free to check out our site to see how we can help you reclaim hours of manual work this tax rush without outsourcing or hiring.

We also invite you to join our Discourse community for other bookkeepers & tax pros using CleanUpBuddy here. We'll add more content there as well as announce events, special promos, and more.

Thanks for tuning in, happy to help with any questions. Just drop a reply.

Touch base next week,

~Toni, CEO of CleanUpBuddy.ai